Wednesday, June 19, 2013

One more anniversary

Today also marks the 60th anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg:

At the height of the Cold War witch-hunts, two Communist Party members were framed for “passing atomic secrets” to the Soviet Union. Despite a massive international outpouring of protest, these parents of two young children were executed at Sing Sing Prison in upstate New York on June 19, 1953.

In the midst of the Chinese Revolution, the Korean War, the purge of the U.S. labor movement and the McCarthy hearings, the relentless anti-communist and anti-Semitic propaganda demanding the Rosenbergs’ legal lynching was meant to silence dissent in the belly of U.S. imperialism.

Despite the threats to themselves, their children and their supporters, the Rosenbergs stood strong and upheld their principles to the very end.

The executioners’ state attempted to tear sons Michael and Robert away from their parents’ supporters. Luckily communists Abe and Anne Meeropol won the ensuing custody battle and adopted the boys, who disappeared from public view for nearly two decades. Eventually they resurfaced and founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children to support the kids of political prisoners and other persecuted activists — which Robert has called “our constructive revenge.”